Social Perception Skills
A travel-based view of one constructivist theory of communication.
We can't travel now like we used to. That's one less way to broaden our world view and learn how to live in a global society. The act of traveling and learning about different cultures has long been touted as a learning experience to broaden one's worldview, but why and how does that work?
One reason could be that while traveling, people are given more opportunities to realise that others live differently and for different reasons. Exposure to a wide variety of ways of living and thinking increases people’s awareness of the larger world outside their usual social circles, a world that is often more complex and likely richer in quality. As a learning experience, traveling can problematise one's understanding of human behavior and the human brain usually tries to resolve problems of understanding. In that resolution lies the potential for greater empathy, or greater suspicion of others.
Because people are creatures of habit, we favour particular ways of traveling. There are some who like visiting different countries for short periods of time and others who prefer working and traveling for a month or two (or years!) in one country making friends with the locals. Then there are others who visit one particular country or region religiously. And unless one's income, family situation, career or personal goals change significantly, how one travels tends not to vary too much.
The above are easily recognisable descriptions of rough types of travelers, and because traveling is an experience, different types of travelers can be used as an analogy to understand communication skills. If you can bear reading through a short discussion of communication theory in the following paragraphs, that is.
Brant R. Burleson's (2007) constructivism-based theory of communication attributes skillful communication to having complex social perception skills. Unpacking that a little, we may have two questions:
a) What is a constructivism-based theory of communication?
b) What is social perception?
Constructivism-based theory of communication
Constructivist theory focuses on how the individual builds (or constructs) knowledge through their own experiences. Music, art, and education are just some aspects of life that have been influenced by this theory. The constructivist scholars Jean Piaget and George Herbert Mead theorised that 'effective communication depended on the ability to "take" (or imaginatively construct) the perspective of others' (Burleson, 2007, pg. 108). In other words, if we can put ourselves in others' shoes, we are on our way to becoming skilled communicators.
The idea is, to communicate effectively, we have to interpret people's behavioural languages well. Putting yourself in others’ shoes helps you interpret behaviours by activating your information store of motivations and actions. The better your information store, the more successfully you can interpret behavioral languages.
A good information store has more data points about human emotions, societal duties and social standing, helping you explain others' behaviour more completely. A good information store also has a high quality of data points which are well-organised.
So, if you are able to put yourself in the shoes of a local mother you meet in your travels, you might be able to imagine the challenges (data points) she has deciding between survival, education, and gender equality. Consequently, if you take time to really reflect on (or organise in your brain) how those challenges may affect her behavior, you will end up with a more insightful explanation of why she allows her children to work in a brick-making factory or why she keeps her daughter out of school.
Social Perception
Your particular understanding of that local mother's difficulties will result in you communicating with her in a different way than if you did not put yourself in their shoes. This kind of communication, based on how one processes information about others’ personality, behaviour, motives, social standing, and societal duties, has been termed 'social perception' by constructivist scholars (Burleson, 2007, pg. 109).
The more developed your social perception skills, the better you are at putting yourself in other's shoes, helping you to communicate with them effectively. So the next question you might have would be, so how do we develop social perception skills?
According to Burleson (2007), advanced social perception skills (resulting in skillful communication) require a 'high level of interpersonal cognitive complexity', which is made up of three cognitive elements - differentiation, abstractness, and integration (pg. 111). This is where it gets a little gnarly, but please stay with me.
Burleson explains that “people who have lots of constructs (high differentiation) that are well organized (high integration) and typically reference psychological characteristics of others (high abstractness) are considered having a high level of interpersonal cognitive complexity” (2007, pg. 111).
Highly-differentiated constructs (or concepts) of people means that you have stored more unique bits of information or have experienced a variety of human behaviors - you possess more data points about people's behaviour. Having highly-abstract concepts of people suggests you dwell less on specific actions of people and more on their mental or emotional states - your data points are of higher quality. And finally, if those concepts are highly-integrated, or more connected and easily accessible in your brain, you have processed or organised those data points well.
Interpersonal construct complexity is a social perception process that directs how we collect and filter through human interaction information, which then allows us to put ourselves in others' shoes, helping us decide how to communicate with people.
The Travelers and the Local Mother
Why aren’t there as many successful, socially perceptive communicators in the world as we would like there to be? High levels of interpersonal construct complexity require each cognitive element to be highly developed. However, people have different ways of living. They have unique cognitive resources that don't develop uniformly, and their life experiences vary as well, leading them to construct knowledge differently.
Let's go back to the analogy of the traveler from the beginning of this article. It might help ground this theory in reality since most of us have travelled for leisure at some point in our lives.
Caveat: Don't take this traveler's analogy as an analysis of different types of travelers! The analogy is meant to explain communication styles.
Let's say then, for simplicity's sake, that each rough type of traveler is the personification of when two out of three of the aforementioned cognitive elements are highly developed.
How would you describe the social perception and communication skills of:
Traveler A, who possesses high differentiation and integration, but low abstractness?
Traveler B, who displays high differentiation and abstractness, but low integration?
Traveler C, who shows high abstractness and integration, but low differentiation?
Traveler A may show they have broad but superficial knowledge of what drives people. They know and readily accept that people act in different ways - the high integration and high differentiation elements make sure of that- but may not be able to fully appreciate why people behave in a certain way due to the low abstractness aspect. They may make use of stereotypes or general knowledge to explain human behaviour. This kind of communicator may respond to new ideas with delight but may make binary judgements(good / bad, successful / not successful) when prompted to comment on inconsistent information about those ideas. Looking at the local mother example above, Traveler A may evaluate her parenting skills as either good or bad, depending on what they think of her specific actions of keeping her daughter from school and getting her children to work.
Traveler B, another rough type of communicator, just can't seem to connect all the information in their heads due to the low integration element. They may demonstrate deep knowledge of a variety of people's motives as a result of the high differentiation and high abstractness elements, but may not be able to synthesize all that breath and depth of information to arrive at a useful or insightful understanding of people. This kind of communicator may respond to new ideas with respect but may not be able to resolve inconsistencies in information about those ideas. Traveler B may feel conflicted about the local mother's dilemma since they can imagine the psychological state the woman is in. They may sympathise with her but may not be able to give a specific evaluation of her actions when asked to make one.
The last of the rough types, Traveler C, is one who is able to communicate with a limited range of people well. This type of communicators can easily put themselves in people's shoes - but only those people whom they have spent a lot of time with - due to the low differentiation element. They may respond well to new ideas that display similar traits to their own way of thinking, or those that they frequently come into contact with. However, they may find it difficult to understand and accept the behaviour of people who appear more different than similar to them. Depending on how familiar Traveler C is with the culture of the local mother, they may either be intolerant of her actions, or seek a deeper relationship to ameliorate her circumstances.
Should we try to level up our interpersonal construct complexity?
Why would someone want to increase their level of interpersonal construct complexity to improve their social perception skills?
Here's one reason to develop our social perception skills: Burleson says that people with high levels of interpersonal cognitive complexity tend to have "a greater capacity to acquire and process social information; thus, they are also particularly good at producing effective messages" (2007, pg. 112). As a friend, effective communication can help you stay away from toxic positivity or negativity whilst you comfort a loved one.
As a parent, effective communication can help your children understand what you need them to do, or how you want to help them. And as a leader of a country, as Jacinda Ardern has shown, producing effective messages can steer your country away from impending disaster as a pandemic washes over the world.
The world is overrun with content, and we constantly battle information overload. An effective message is a rarity. Perhaps, through learning how to produce effective messages, one day we can cut through to the heart of the matter and communicate in ways that support, not overwhelm, people around us.
Reference
Burleson, B. R. (2007). Constructivism: A General Theory of Communication Skill. In B. B. Whaley & W. Samter (Eds.), Explaining communication: Contemporary theories and exemplars (p. 105–128). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
